An Advancement of Analytical Techniques in Herbal Research

Abstract

As the demand and commercial value of the Herbal Medicines is increasing tremendously, assurance of safety, quality and efficacy of medicinal plants and herbal products is becoming a crucial issue. The need of the hour is to develop a systematic approach and well-designed methodologies for the standardization of herbal raw materials and herbal formulations. Standardization methods should take into consideration all aspects contributing to the quality of the herbal drugs. Herbal Medicines are composed of many constituents and are therefore very capable of variation. Hence it is very important to obtain reliable chromatographic fingerprints that represent pharmacologically active and chemically characteristic components of the Herbal Medicine. The information generated based on this chromatographic pattern has a potential application in the identification of an authentic drug, in excluding the adulterants and in maintaining the quality and consistency of the drug. Several analytical techniques have been developed for obtaining fingerprinting profiles of the herbal medicines and have assured to be a valuable tool for proving constant composition of herbal preparations by establishing relevant criteria for uniformity. This paper deals with the advanced extraction as well as chromatographic techniques with the help of which qualitative and quantitative evaluation of Herbal Medicines and formulations can be carried out. The advancement of analytical techniques is thus bringing a new era of development which will serve as a rapid and unambiguous tool in the herbal research thereby allowing the manufacturers to set quality standards and specifications so as to seek marketing approval from regulatory authorities.